“It’s always something with the club, huh?” she said, attempting a smile.
“I wish there wasn’t,” he lamented.
“That’s the price that comes with being top dog – literally speaking, I guess. People come after you.” He looked miserable, and she hated that things kept going off in odd directions, that they couldn’t just make small talk, and steal heated glances at one another, and wind up making out on the couch. Why did things have to be so difficult?
No, not difficult. Unusual. He was a Lean Dog. Normal social convention didn’t apply.
It shouldn’t have been a revelation, but it was a little bit. She’d had ordinary; had safe, and normal, and socially acceptable.
Carter may have been that once upon a time, in high school, maybe, but that wasn’t his life anymore. If she chose him, she had to accept that.
Shedidaccept that.
“Tell me something good,” she said, softly, and his gaze flickered back up to meet hers. Questioning, uncertain. If she didn’t handle this the right way, manage to draw him back in, he would leave, she thought, and tell himself he was sparing her somehow. Protecting her. “Tell me something that happened today that was good.”
His brows lifted, and, slowly, his expression cleared – to one of quiet wonder. He wet his lips. “Um.” Thought a moment, and then a second, softer wave of surprise seemed to hit him. “Ghost complimented me.”
She knew Kenny Teague well enough to know that compliments were rare and sparing things. She smiled encouragingly. “That’s awesome! What did he say?”
“He said I was good with people. That I put them at ease.” He sounded like he couldn’t believe it. “He sent me out as the lead today.”
“In Ghost-speak, that’s better than a compliment. That’s, like, a ringing endorsement.”
“Yeah.” His brows drew together. “Something went down last night, after I left…”
The coffeeshop. After a conversation that she didn’t want to dwell on, and which she suspected he didn’t want to, either.
“I was the only patched member there, and I was just trying to contain it, but. Mercy said something, after. He said I was ‘stepping up.’ He said I always acted like I didn’t care what went on around the club.”
“Well, that can’t be true.”
“No, it…I think maybe it is. Itwas,” he amended. “But it felt good today to be a part of things. To feel like I wascontributing, you know?”
She nodded. “I know.” The poor thing had been very lost for a long time, now, and she had the sense she was witnessing him finding his way, shakily, nervously, back to the path of his life. A different one that he’d started out on, sure, but no less worthwhile, for all that it didn’t resemble everyone else’s.
He blinked, and refocused, his expression softening. “What about you? Tell me something good that happened to you today?”
Heat flared to life again inside her, simmering and comforting this time. “I manned up and told the truth,” she said. “And then this incredibly hot biker boy kissed me.”
His smirking, teasing grin from before creeping back, twice as welcome now, twice as thrilling.
“So that was pretty good.”
He picked up his fork again and went back to twirling pasta. “Yeah, that sounds pretty good.”
~*~
They ate, and Carter helped her load the dishwasher, though she told him he didn’t have to. They topped up their glasses, and went to sit on the couch, and it felt easier, now; like a splinter had been pulled out, sore spots lanced. Like another hurdle of mutual understanding had been leaped, and he wasn’t nervous anymore so much as pleasantly warm and glad to be sitting a few inches away from her. Carter was aware of a mutual, below-surface heat simmering between them, acknowledged, but silent, still. There was no need to rush this – even if it took a shocking amount of self-control not to grip her hair and reel her in like he’d been wanting to for days, now.
It turned out, once they stopped dancing around each other, it was shockingly easy to slide back into an easy friendship.
“It was sobusythere,” she was saying of Chicago, gesturing with her half-full glass. He was afraid wine might slop over the side and splash the sofa, though, given its dated, ugly bulk, he didn’t figure she would mind that much. “And that was soexciting, at first. It was a real city, finally. The lights, and the traffic, and the way everyone walked, or took the bus, and it was all so crowded. It felt like being a part of something huge.” Her tone shifted, then, from wistful – it was obvious she’d enjoyed her time there, in the Windy City – to something a touch more glum. “Something so huge that you don’t matter at all. You’re literally an ant.” She held up thumb and forefinger, dark purple nail polish catching the light, gleaming bright as glass. “And busy is great at first – but then it got so I was tired all the time. You can’t take a breath. My boss was always emailing, or texting, or calling me. He’d want files sent over after nine at night. Which, Iget it. That’s business. But then it would take two hours instead of two minutes to send, and I’d oversleep, and miss the bus, and some douche would bump into me in line at Starbucks and spill hot coffee all over my jacket, which I couldn’t afford in the first place.”
“Someone spilled hot coffee on you?” he asked, alarmed.
She waved the concern away. “It all went on the jacket, which was ruined. Four-hundred bucks down the drain. But I was trying to keep up with everyone else’s fashion at the office – my whole purple hair and Doc Martens schtick wasn’t exactly the done thing where I worked.” She rolled her eyes, and then held out her arms. “Which is how we got the new, improved, more appropriately fashioned me.” She sounded bitter, and it troubled him. Leah was the sort of person who’d always struck him as shockingly confident, adaptable, and unbothered. She’d changed her style a little, sure – though she still had bright nails, and loud shoes, and wild pops of color here and there. He’d thought she’d chosen to tone her look down a little, and not that she resenting having to try and fit in anywhere.
“You could dye your hair again,” he suggested, carefully, “if you miss it.”
